Frustration

The time for optimism has passed. I have been without work for four months, with the most frustrating aspect of that being that I elected to leave a job and move closer to my family just before the bottom fell out of the market. It is true that I could have reconsidered whether or not to move, but the fact is that I did want to leave my last position because I had grown tired of the area. I miss certain people and even certain aspects of the area, but the move has proved to be beneficial for my son, which makes it difficult to second guess the whole thing. But at the heart of my, loss of interest, I'm done.

The Beginning

It has come to my attention that I am not good enough to be employed in the current job market. This realization was thrust upon me after going through a three month hiring process for a position almost identical to the last job I held, which had me thinking that I was in a good position to remove my name from the roles of the unemployed. My optimism was insufficient it seems, as I was given a letter expressing the tremendous positive impression that I left on the ten different people who interviewed me over the last three months, but that they were unable to extend a job offer because the three open positions had been filled.

I could turn this into a rant about the closed community culture into which I have attempted to re-insert myself after eight years away, but I don't think that would do me any good at this point. Instead, I am feeling like it would be a good time to discuss my emotional state after this rejection. First I will say that I am at least happy that I got that far into the process since I have put out over forty applications and resumes since the end of March, with only four or five of them having the decency to tell me to not bother waiting to hear back. That being said, it was rather crushing to get to this stage, especially for a position for which I was precisely qualified.

But being jobless, as I am not considered unemployed by the state of California because they denied me UI benefits and I am therefore not considered a factor in the local 20% unemployment statistics, is only part of the stress. I have a family, a son who will be two in the next few weeks, and his mother, who I have been responsible for supporting since we decided to forgo childcare for a single income family. That has become a NO income family. I became jobless to move back to the community in which I grew up, in part to be closer to family and friends, but mostly to give my son a better place to grow. Now the stress of not having a job has me at my wits end, unable to nurture and provide for the very child who was supposed to benefit from this move. The first thought that crossed my mind was that I now understand the mentality of people who lose their jobs and go home to murder their whole family rather than have them face the uncertainty of the future. I have more stability than that, but I feel my mask of stoicism slipping. All told, I hope that this will be read by somebody who is in a similar situation and is consoled by the plight of another man, but I really just think it will be here on the internet for nobody to see but me.